Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quoteShare via Email Print this Page Daily Quotes Archives2024-06-18 Jun 18, 2024Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.~ PlatoWhen any court violates the clean and unambiguous language of the constitution, a fraud is perpetrated and no one is bound to obey it.~ State v. SuttonThe two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.~ Thomas Jefferson Jun 17, 2024It is the essence of the institutions of liberty that it be recognized that guilt is personal and cannot be attributed to the holding of opinions or to mere intent in the absence of overt acts.~ Justice Charles Evans HughesAll truth is safe, and nothing else is safe; and he who keeps back the truth or withholds it from men, from motives of expediency, is either a coward, or a criminal, or both.~ Max MullerAn avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates his duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.~ Thomas Paine Jun 14, 2024We enact many laws that manufacture criminals, and then a few that punish them.~ Benjamin R. TuckerIf you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him.~ Cardinal RichelieuFormerly we suffered from crimes; now we suffer from laws.~ Cornelius Tacitus Jun 13, 2024Do you think that we want those laws to be observed? We want them broken. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power the government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.~ Ayn RandOne has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws, but conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.~ Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.Never give in. Never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.~ Sir Winston Churchill Jun 12, 2024If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his case, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people he thinks he should get, rather than cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm -- in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself.~ Justice Robert H. Jackson Previous week's quotes Next week's quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print